Project Activities
The first grade integrated science and literacy curriculum was designed to promote learning as called for by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). It consists of three phenomena-based instructional units, each focused on one of three science domains: life science, physical science, and Earth and space science. Across the three units, lessons are designed to provide students with opportunities to strengthen their scientific proficiency by engaging with NGSS disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts. Moreover, students encounter central concepts through multiple modalities: doing, talking, reading, writing and visualizing. Throughout the units, students conduct hands-on investigations; read; gather information from various sources, such as books, videos, and images; and participate in discussions and writing activities to explain science ideas. They collect evidence from investigations and secondhand sources to create physical models and write explanations. The researchers evaluated the efficacy of the curriculum for improving first grade students' science learning and their literacy learning related to reading and the use of science-related language. The researchers also examined the nature of teachers’ implementation of the curriculum.
Structured Abstract
Setting
The research took place in diverse elementary schools within three districts located in different geographic regions of California. The school districts included a large urban district, a large rural district, and a midsize suburban district.
Sample
The research team conducted the study in 82 first grade classrooms across 40 public elementary schools. The sample consisted of 39 teachers within 18 schools assigned to the intervention condition and 43 teachers in 22 schools assigned to the comparison condition. The analytic sample included 2,133 first grade students from the 82 classrooms. Collectively, the schools served culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. Approximately 30 percent of students across all schools were identified as multilingual learners, and nearly 70 percent qualified for the Federal lunch program. Most schools in the sample were Title I schools.
The intervention is an integrated science and literacy curriculum that supports first grade students in building science content knowledge as well as oral language, vocabulary, and reading comprehension skills. It consists of three units, each focused on one of three science domains (i.e., life, physical, and Earth and space science) and each aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards in addition to a number of Common Core English Language Arts and English Language Development standards. Each unit includes 22 lessons to be taught within a 6–8 week period. The curriculum is hosted on a digital platform for teachers that enables the download of the teaching guide, lessons, and supporting documents. The intervention also includes a series of teacher professional learning sessions distributed across the school year and timed to prepare teachers to teach each unit and cover the essential classroom practices that support language and literacy development. Students are provided with access to hands-on kit materials and notebooks for recording their science work.
Research design and methods
The researchers randomly assigned each of the 40 schools to either the treatment or control condition with all teachers in a school receiving the same assignment. The first grade teachers in the treatment condition implemented the integrated science and literacy curriculum intervention as part of their regular classroom instruction and received professional development on the curriculum. Teachers in the comparison condition implemented their regular classroom instruction without the intervention and were asked to teach science as they typically would during the school year. Teachers in both groups were tasked with providing instruction on the same science topics and to support students in building proficiency with the same NGSS learning goals as outlined in their state standards for 1st grade. Teachers in the treatment condition were provided with the full-year intervention package and received 3 days of professional learning on the instructional stance of the overall curriculum, the features of the units, and how to implement the lessons. These professional learning sessions were facilitated by the developers who had designed the first grade units. The researchers examined the efficacy of the intervention across one school year (2021-22).
Control condition
Teachers in schools assigned to the control condition used their business-as-usual curriculum and instructional practices and the professional learning opportunities made available to them by their districts. They were asked to implement their regular classroom instruction without the intervention and to teach science as they typically would during the school year.
Key measures
The research team administered two standardized assessments of science and reading at the end of the school year: the Iowa Assessments for Grade 1 provided a standardized measure of within-year student achievement in reading and general science knowledge. The team also administered researcher-developed assessments that measured science vocabulary and the knowledge and practice goals of the performance expectations of NGSS for first grade.
Data analytic strategy
To analyze the effect of the intervention on student learning outcomes, the research team employed multilevel linear regression models with students nested within schools. The team controlled for a range of school-level and student-level characteristics, as well as for students’ prior achievement on reading tests administered by each district at the beginning of the school year.
Key outcomes
The research team focused their study on 40 elementary schools in three school districts. Schools were randomly assigned to either use the first grade integrated science and literacy curriculum, or continue their instruction as usual. The main findings of this project are as follows (Harris et al., 2023):
- In schools that used the integrated science and literacy curriculum, first grade students achieved significantly higher on an NGSS-focused science learning assessment and on a science vocabulary-in-use assessment.
- First grade students in schools that used the integrated science and literacy curriculum slightly outperformed their counterparts in comparison schools on an assessment of general science knowledge.
- At the end of the school year, results from a standardized reading assessment showed no differences in performance between groups, indicating that students who had access to the integrated science and literacy curriculum remained on par with students in comparison classrooms with regard to reading development.
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Products and publications
Publications:
Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Harris, C. J., Murphy, R. F., Feng, M., & Rutstein, D. (2023). Supporting science learning and literacy development together: Initial results from a curriculum study in first grade classrooms. San Francisco, CA: WestEd.
Rutstein, D., Alozie, N., Fujii, R., & Fried, R. (2021). Addressing Challenges When Designing NGSS Aligned 3-Dimensional Assessments for Young Learners. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2021.. International Society of the Learning Sciences.
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